Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Snakes on a Plane Synopsis

Snakes on a Plane stars Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent who is escorting an eye witness on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles when a crimelord sets in motion the release of hundreds of deadly snakes on the commercial airplane in order to eliminate the witness before he can testify against him. The FBI agent must protect his witness while banding together with the pilot, frightened crew and passengers in a desperate attempt to survive.

The name really says it all. It’s snakes. On a plane. What’s Samuel L. Jackson doing in the middle of such a hokey premise?
The idea for Snakes on a Plane is so bad, that there’s huge potential here for something really good. Early trailers for the film pegged it as a tongue in cheek lampoon of all those bad Hollywood disaster movies we’ve sat through. With Sam Jackson stalking through the plane swearing, glaring, and shouting “Enough is enough!”, it’s almost a work of camp genius. Here is a bad movie that actually knows it is bad, and rather than try to get better, just wraps its snakey tail around its badness and squeezes it for everything it's worth.

At least that’s what we were all hoping for.

More recent promotional ads have a been a little less encouraging, as New Line Cinema gets cold feet and falls in to trying to sell this thing as a traditional thriller. As a serious horror movie, this will never work. Audiences are going to Snakes looking for laughs. Sam Jackson gets it. He demanded that they go back and insert more swearing, just to push the whole thing a little further over the top.

So which movie will show up? A silly, over the top, snarky snake laugh riot or the worst horror movie in history? Maybe it’ll be both. As long as there’s plenty of mutha fuckin snakes.